A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.s1.4

c9.s1.4

For this theory of a Prākrit period of Indian literature preceding the Sanskrit period there is no evidence of value. The suggestion of the translation of the epic may be dismissed as absurd, but the case with other forms of literature is more worthy of consideration. The fairy-tale is a thing which readily circulates among the people long before it is dignified by literary treatment by the higher classes of society, and in point of fact there is a strong tradition to the effect that it was in a Prākrit dialect, though one closely allied to Sanskrit, that the great collection of such tales, which powerfully affected Sanskrit literature, as the *Bṛhatkathā* of Guṇāḍhya, was composed. Guṇāḍhya's work, however, is of very complex art and uncertain date, and in all probability came into being at a time when we have abundant evidence of the existence of Sanskrit literature, so that this instance is irrelevant to the contention in favour of a Prākrit period of literature. Equally little value attaches to the argument for the priority of Prākrit lyric. It was founded on a wholly misleading view of the antiquity of the anthology of Hāla, who was placed in the first century A. D. Against this view must be set the form of Māhārāṣṭrī Prākrit, which shows a development in the language such as cannot be dated before the latter part of the second century A. D., if regard be paid to the evidence of the inscriptions and of the Prākrits of the dramas of Açvaghoṣa.¹ It is true that Vararuci's Prākrit grammar recognizes Māhārāṣṭrī of the type of the anthology, but there is no evidence that Vararuci is early in date, for his identification by later tradition with the Kātyāyana who criticized Pāṇini is without serious value. Jacobi,² on the other hand, has identified Hāla with the Sātavāhana under whom Jain tradition records a change in the Church calendar in A. D. 467. There is no cogent reason to accept or deny this date; what is clear is that so far as the evidence goes there is nothing to suggest great antiquity for Prākrit lyric. Lüders, who finds traces of its existence about the second century B. C. in the short inscriptions of the Sītābengā and Jogīmārā caves on the Rāmgarh hill, and who assigns to the same century the Hāthīgumphā inscription of Khāravela of Kaliṅga, which displays, though faintly, some of the characteristics of Sanskrit prose Kāvya, makes no claim for the priority of Prākrit to Sanskrit in these literary uses; on the contrary he acknowledges fully the coexistence of a Sanskrit literature.